Contents of the Current Issue

FUTURIST: NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2007

Toward a Global Rule of Law: A Practical Step toward World Peace By Joseph Pelton (president of the Global Legal Information Network [GLIN] Foundation, and founder of the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation)

            SUMMARY: The Global Legal Information Network (GLIN) provides a framework of international laws that could overcome cultural barriers to world peace. The network is already used by law libraries and courts around the world and could assist in the creation of new laws governing transnational issues, such as global warming, nuclear weapons, and even the monitoring of near-Earth-orbit objects such as asteroids.  

On Dark Ages By Nader Elhefnawy (visiting assistant professor of literature at the University of Miami; he has published widely on literature and international affairs)

            SUMMARY: Overview of pessimistic forecasts for civilization, including the views of Jeremy Rifkin, Thomas Homer-Dixon, and others. Catastrophe/doomsday thinking is on the rise. What can we learn from studies of the decline of past societies? Explanations are typically either "mystical" or "materialistic," and thus typically are the proposed solutions for avoiding the process of decline.

            PLUS: Commentary by Lewis Lapham (emeritus editor, Harper's magazine), "Is the United States Bound for Collapse?"; also, an interview with Cullen Murphy (author of Are We Rome?), "Imperial Parallels."

OUTLOOK 2008 By FUTURIST Staff

            SUMMARY: Annual roundup of the most thought-provoking forecasts and ideas appearing in THE FUTURIST and Futurist Update over the past year, covering business and economics, food, demographics, energy and key other resource issues, world affairs, science and technological breakthroughs, and more. The "Top 10 Forecasts" as ranked by the editors are:

            1. The world will have a billion millionaires by 2025.

            2. Fashion will go wired as technologies and tastes converge to revolutionize the textile industry.

            3. The threat of another cold war with China, Russia, or both will replace terrorism as the chief foreign-policy concern of the United States.

            4. Counterfeiting of currency will proliferate, driving the move toward a cashless society.

            5. The earth is on the verge of a significant extinction event. The twenty-first century could witness a biodiversity collapse 100 to 1,000 times greater than any previous extinction.

            6. Water will be in the twenty-first century what oil was in the twentieth century.

            7. World population by 2050 may grow larger than previously expected, due in part to healthier, longer-living people.

            8. The number of Africans imperiled by floods will grow 70-fold by 2080.

            9. Rising prices for natural resources could lead to a full-scale assault on the Arctic.

            10. More decisions will be made by nonhuman entities.

Thinking Globally, Acting Locally, Living Personally By Cynthia G. Wagner (managing editor, THE FUTURIST)

            SUMMARY: Highlights of the World Future Society's 2007 conference in Minneapolis include presentations by evolutionary anthropologist Helen Fisher on "why we love"; biomedical researcher Gregory Stock on biotech breakthroughs and their impacts on medicine, both pro and con; Reason magazine contributing writer Ronald Bailey on prospects for ecological restoration; economist Tor Dahl on how the vastly improved productivity of the Knowledge Economy may lead to global peace; independent futurist and scholar Joel Barker on making innovation more purposeful; futurist and management scholar Nat Irvin II on how the "demographic singularity" will occur in the United States sooner than predicted and what its immediate impacts may be; and much more.

The Search for Foresight, Part 6 By Edward Cornish (founding president, World Future Society; editor, THE FUTURIST; author, Futuring: The Exploration of the Future)

            SUMMARY: Continuing his memoirs, the founding president of the World Future Society describes how futurists began to gain influence in government; the work behind planning for another major conference; and how the lessons of the past helped launch more successful ventures for the Society's growing membership in its first decade. By the mid-1970s, the Society had seen the emergence of the space age and the early hints of a new computer-driven communications and knowledge age on the horizon. 

To order the print edition of the November-December 2007 issue of THE FUTURIST ($4.95 plus $4.90 postage and handling) or to become a member of the World Future Society ($49 per year).

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